Alienware M17x - linux compatibility?

Anyone use linux on this laptop? I am talking about the "all powerful" version. I'm curious if everything works (obviously hybrid SLi won't but does regular SLi work on 260m's in linux) as I use a number of distros (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gentoo, Sabayon, Mint, Fedora to name a few) and linux compatibility is important.

Its an nVidia MCP79 chipset so it *should* run linux with few issues I just need to know if the major components are supported - wireless, 260m cards, sound.

 

Both nVidia gpu and Intel wifi support for linux are excellent right now. It shouldn't take any tweaking to get both of those up. Linux support for SLi has been around for a long time, and unless there's something different about your setup, everything should be fine.

I use a bit of Blender and CUDA, and your machine makes me drool.

 

Unfortunately, the wifi is not Intel. Its Dell's wifi. I shouldn't have issues with it though from what I understand.

And yeah, I got the Microcenter deal. Q9000 @ 2GHz, 260m SLI, 500GB 7200, 4GB DDR3. Not a bad kit for 2299.

Anyway, thanks for the info. I'm excited to get the machine - not excited to make the payments for the next century.

 

I don't think the chipset should be an issue. I've got the same and it works fine. Nice specs

 

Dell wireless cards are actually rebranded Broadcom cards, which are a PITA for Linux. Sometimes they'll work out-of-the-box, other times you'll have to use Windows drivers plus NDISwrapper.

 

I've heard both sides of the coin. We will see what happens.

 

Its apparently a BCM4322 chip.

 

This laptop works FLAWLESSLY with Linux Mint. Wifi detected out of the box, my data card is automatically configured... Sound works, video works great... Everything works perfectly.

Now I need to try other distros. This laptop runs linux faster than my desktop though which is crazy to me.

 

Great! Happy it works for you.

 

Yeah now I just need to get a second hard drive... Waiting on Dell to send me the hard drive caddy. I don't like dual-booting on a single drive. PITA if GRUB ever dies.

 

What about all the "color" accents, keyboard and the like?

 

those are written to a EEPROM


boot into vista or win 7 then change it to what you want and no matter what you run it will be that


( i know for a fact)

 

Ethrem. Which distro did you use? I'd like to run linux with vmware server.

 

Fedora 11 worked great .....

 

Add these to the list of 100% working. Ubuntu 9.10 and OpenSolaris

 

Hi Ethrem, i have a m17x ... and i can not get the nvidia card work propertly... did u ?...yo said that the video goes great... how u do that ?.... try debian, ubuntu and now mint....all the same problem.... blank screen after install the nvidia driver 180 dowlonaded from the nvidia website... any information would be appreciated... this is my email address: [email protected].... really thanks

 

Hi! Could you confirm if Linux Mint worked without any tweaking? If it required some tweaking, could you please post your process of installation & configuration for the same on M17x? I have been trying with Fedora 12, but facing issues.

Thanks

 

yeah, good luck, probably OK. With my Vostro 1220, I deliberately spec'd an Intel 5300 for linux purposes.

 

I used Linux Mint 7. Honestly though, any distro works great with VMWare. I just like the fact that LM includes proprietary drivers.

On an M17x? How did you get sound? I had to download the Broadcom STA driver from restricted but my sound does not work at all under 9.10. Worked fine on LM7 and out of the box wireless too.

Don't install the driver from the nVidia website. Go to system preferences and click restricted drivers or whatever and install it from there.

There was no tweaking involved with getting LM7 working on my M17x. It worked out of the box with wireless, sound, and all. I think my bluetooth even worked but I can't completely remember right now.

 

You don't have sound? A couple of things I can think of right off the top of my head: I am using VirtualBox and not using the Dell audio drivers. Aside from that, I might have installed something inside Ubuntu but can't exactly be sure until I go there and unfortunately, I don't have my computer with me now. I don't remember it giving me a hard time that's why I can't remember what I had to do. But it works

 

Well you can't say that the distro is 100% working if you're virtualizing it because virtualization doesn't give direct access to the hardware in the computer. I know these distros ALL work with VMWare and VirtualBox perfectly - but that's because the virtualization programs emulate older hardware when it comes to sound and networking that just about everything supports out of the box. I'm talking about a native installation, not a virtualized one.

 

Hi Ethrem,
you said:
"Don't install the driver from the nVidia website. Go to system preferences and click restricted drivers or whatever and install it from there."

R u talking about Mint ?, if the answer is year, i did exactly what u said, i installed from System-Preferences...etc... and get blank screen!

I just try with the nvidia drivers from the website with Debian.... Today i'm going to try with the new and certified driver...190.x....

 

hi,
i install on my alienware ubuntu 9.10 , but my audio doesn't work. What can i do for resolve this problem?

 

Install another distro over Ubuntu.

 

The only distros that work with sound are openSUSE and MEPIS...

 

dude... a few posts earlier you said that sound works out of the box in LM7. I tested it.. n it doesn't. Now you say that openSUSE and MEPIS work fine with sound. Sure of it this time?

 

Post your specs and then I'll see what the issue might be.

I still recommend Fedora 12 and Mandriva 2010. Or Debian. All three are solid distros and I'm sure there's a solution for the sound problems.

 

Make suer these packages are installed. Enable any multimedia repository.
alsa-1.0.*
alsa-utils-1.0.*
alsa-oss-32bit-1.0*
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.*
alsa-firmware-1.0.*
alsa-plugins-1.0.*
alsa-oss-1.0.*

I am not sure which versions they are at now, the ALSA packages listed. Just get the latest stable ones.

 

Has anyone managed to get the M17x Broadcom wireless working in Ubuntu 9.10?

 

You need to enable the Ubuntu repository that has the Broadcom firmware for your card. Well, probably. That's what you had to do previously. Not sure what the situation is now with Broadcom as I don't have a computer using one now.

I read/heard they should work out of the box but the number of Broadcom users posting 'how do I get my card to work?' doesn't seem to diminish.

 

ok ppl... I agree with Ethrem.. after ahving tested teh OpenSuSE myself. Sound works fine. However, I have also got some links regarding patch(es) on:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...th-most-distros.-idt-92hd73c1x5-chip.-771162/
I hope this proves useful to some people here. (Although I haven't been able to figure these out completely.

 

How did you manage to get your wireless working with Opensuse? Do you have the same Broadcom 4322?

 

Yeah I do. I downloaded the Broadcom STI drivers...

 

Could you please provide a detailed explanation. Couldn't figure it out by myself.
Thank You.

 

Its honestly not an easy process unless you use an Ubuntu-based distro... and I had my M17x freeze when I was trying to do it through the restricted drivers page so I had to do it manually...

And its STA, sorry. Got Subaru on the brain.

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

Follow the instructions to the letter and it works perfectly.

 

Thank for the link. What distro do you recommend for M17X? I would go with Ubuntu 9.10 but see a lot of issues reported. Suse looks good, but a little harder to use (for me).

 

Ok, I'm done with linux for M17X. As far as my skills go, it's hopeless. OpenSuse was installed with sound and video but firefox couldn't load and every attempt to update the system (via ethernet connection) ended up with total system lockup and instability. Made 3 attempts of clean install, tried carefully fixing just the wireless. When I got to the "make" command absence and tried installing it through Yast system froze again with an error.
Next was Ubuntu 9.10. All was fine, but no sound and no wireless and all my attempts to install drivers ended up with system crash...
No go. Not for me.... Me not speaking #Bash...shutdown

 

FWIW the Broadcom STA driver is known to be flaky and can cause lockups. In my experience using it with my MBP it has been very cranky about the kernel version it is compiled against. There are some patches floating about that seem to work for some people, but patching proprietary drivers is an exercise in futility -- a band-aid at best.

Sounds like you didn't get the driver installed though, so that's not your problem. Just thought I'd mention it in case the problem arises for someone in the future.

 

Actually, I decided not to give up just yet... There's another way.
I switched to VMWare Player to create virtual instances of linux distros inside my W7 installation. That way I can experiment without hurting the system. So far I got audio and video working in Ubuntu 9.10. The next step is the wireless.

 

Hoooah!!! It's working. After some more testing through the VMWare I decided to take the red pill! New fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10. To make this easy I just plugged the ethernet cable to have I-net. So here we go:

Wireless:

Go to the System-> Administration->Hardware Drivers and activate the STA wireless driver -> reboot (not sure if it was needed) and Bingo!


Video:

By default Ubuntu installs a decent driver but if you activate the Nvidia 185 driver from the same -> "Hardware drivers" menu you'll get a nice one (with very good "clocking" for your cards and all function keys working. I do keep the 9400 disabled in BIOS to lower a few degrees on the MCP chip, so try with/out and see what works best.

Audio: Just follow the link to the letter and you'll get a new alsa and the perfect (NO STUTTERING) sound after restart.

I'm a total newbie to linux, but just love it and.... heck, will learn it.

P.S.> No need for OSD software - all touch-sensitive keys work with graphical features!

 

You don't need to go through all of that AT ALL for sound...

just run synaptic and install the backports-alsa package for your running kernel. Reboot and voila!

Also, make sure your M17x never comes unplugged when you're using linux or you will get a freeze. Not pleasant at all. I'm about to solder my M17x's power cord in because I'm getting so annoyed with it coming out!

 

Wow! And your sound works perfectly with both headphones sets/speakers/internal mic/skype etc without any additional work? If so I'm impressed as I had to recompile the alsa to a newer version before getting everything work.

 

I don't have a microphone to test but everything else works perfectly fine - and sound is actually LOUDER in Linux than in Windows...

 

You should try Mepis. They have two versions right now. One that uses an older kernel and a newer version that has been developed with a newer kernel and the updated KDE 4. You could try both and see if one works with your laptop. The forum is very good for answering questions, too.

Like I said before, the Broadcom wifi issue should be solved by enabling the related repo and installing the firmware.

The sound problem should be solved by having the right codecs installed. If ALSA is a problem, it's probably not the latest ALSA version and requires a certain version or the most up-to-date version. It depends what sound chipset is in the Alienware. Mepis has some good backports and repos that should be good for solving those problems. If you try it, pm me and I can send you some links. You just need to learn how to edit the sources list but maybe you know how to do that already. Mepis is also based on Debian so most solutions in Debian will also apply.

If Alsa is at a certain version and there's bugs or issues, the Ubuntu devs take ages to address issues so you are on your own trying to find a solution or waiting until somebody does. I suggest trying Mepis if Ubuntu doesn't work out or you find it too difficult. Ubuntu has good GUI apps, though.

 

I think most distros are alike on the inside. I'd definitely give Mepis a try but currently have everything working fine. Managed to install and play flawlessly KingsBounty Armored Princess through Steam in PlayOnLinux in Ubuntu 9.10 all maxed out at 1900rez+16xAA. So I'm more than happy since everything I need from my computer can be done now without worries...

 

Hey, did you guys managed to get the integrated camera working? What about the hybrid, or at least, all three graphics card usable? I want to reserve the two discrete card only for CUDA calculation.

 

Hi everyone, sorry about getting to this party late I have installed PClinuxOS (kernel 2.6.33 on my alienware m17x all powerful. It runs very well on the two gt260 nvidia cards and the sound works ootb. @4ding, my camera works great through cheese.

I don't understand why linux cannot see the discrete graphics card WHEN IT IS ENABLED This don't make any sense. When the computer is unplugged the BIOS reverts to the discrete card and unless one goes into the BIOS and disables the card we get the bsod on start up.

I was going to install two instances of PClinuxOS and boot to one when powered and the other when unpowered but when the card is enabled linux doesn't see it

It looks like we will have to wait for the 2.6.34 kernel to get this working unless someone here can tell me how to make linux see the gt9400m card when its enabled. Can anyone assist?

Thanks, penguin

 

Hey many thanks for the cheese recommendation. I'll give it a try soon. I've no problem with sound, with Lenny 5.0.3 and XFCE4. It took me less than half an hour to get flash, broadcom wireless, and nvidia drivers to work. Broadcom especially really stepped up and fix their Linux driver issues.

About the integrated 9400m + discrete cards, as far as I know, they're still working on it. Last I saw a few people were trying to get some petition out from the manufacturer for more info on the hybrid stuff. So right now, I'm just stuck with 260M all the time, and the 9400M disabled. Shouldn't be a problem unless you're really into saving battery life, which as far as I know isn't what this laptop is about.

Hopefully they'll figure it out soon.

 

Thanks for the reply f4ding, I am in the process of calling alienware support to find out if they would consider a flash for our bios which would stop the computer from changing our graphics settings. So far have not heard back from them. If my computer would just leave my settings like I want them there would be no problem I'm hoping the 2.6.34 kernel which has been released for testing will have the fix in it. There is talk about the results on the kernel site.

penguin

 

I don't know about the M17x and how the switching and all works, but you shouldn't need to install two instances of Linux just to have different GPU configurations.

You should be able to just have two different xorg.conf files and use an rc.local script to switch between the two depending on whether it's powered on startup or not.

But with new versions of Linux, you shouldn't even need to do that... xorg should auto-configure no matter what. It should just detect what GPU is there and run with it, no end-user twiddling required. Linux is not Windows... it is much more amenable to hardware changes.